Rovinj, WWII Love Notes, Rye Madness, the Brain on Fiction & More: Endnotes 19 March

Rovinj, WWII Love Notes, Rye Madness, the Brain on Fiction & More: Endnotes 19 March

Friday, 19 March, 2021

Every Friday, we celebrate the weekend — and all the reading and relaxing and daydreaming time ahead — with Melissa's favorite book- and travel-related links of the week. Why work when you can read fun stuff?!

This post is part of our Endnotes series.

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That sun-dappled village above is Rovinj, a fishing settlement found in northwestern Croatia. Perched on the edge of the Adriatic, it feels equal parts Italian and Croatian, and it’s altogether charming. You can enjoy a coffee with whipped cream along the harbor, climb the 192 (rickety) steps to the top of the historic bell tower at the St. Euphemia church, meander along the cobbled alleys of Old Town, eat fresh-as-fresh-can-be seafood, and just generally soak up the awesome vibe. (This is where David and I ate the best pizza we’ve ever had in our lives.) {more}

  • Authors are ‘forever trespassing into history, digging around in the soil, dusting off new discoveries and tilting them to the light.’ Read more of an author’s reflections on retelling historical episodes as fiction.

  • This is fascinating! In the early 1900s, the population of the tiny island of Alicudi, near Sicily, started having visions of ‘witches banqueting on remote beaches; talking hessian sacks; women growing wings and flying to the island of Sicily to do their shopping; ghosts, clowns and soft pebbles falling from the sky.’ And scientists think their bread was to blame.

  • ‘Symmetrical lines, pastel hues, immaculate composition, or something idiosyncratic and beautiful that you can and cannot describe at once’… how to see the world like Wes Anderson.

hotel opera, prague (c. 1890)
Hotel Opera, Prague (c. 1890). Photo by Valentina Jacks.
  • We love the book City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab and couldn’t be more excited that it’s being adapted as a TV series.

  • I was honored to be a guest on the podcast Find Your Voice, a show for people who think they’re not ‘real writers.’ Host Allison Fallon talked about how I made the jump from cookbook author to book-and-travel-podcaster. (And a bunch of other personal and interesting stuff.)

  • This needs no sales pitch: On the Undeniable Lure of the Historic Literary Home

  • This Twitter thread is informative and amazing. Performer Rosita Royce danced with doves at the 1939 New York World’s Fair and, well… you just need to read it. Click through to enjoy all the details.

Tynska Literary Cafe
Pann's Coffee Shop, Los Angeles. Designed by Helen Liu Fong. Photo by Ashok Sinha.
 

Wishing you delightful mysteries and stories with satisfying endings.

Top image courtesy of Dimitry Anikin/Unsplash.

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Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got a Jane Eyre reading, famous lit passages, a haunted bookstore, Petrarch's plague letters, a Richard Kadrey story, and more.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got a punk rock graphic novel from Blondie, the antipodes map, the world's oldest book of English lit, thatched cottages, and more.
Every Friday, we share our favorite book- and travel-related links. This week, we've got the world's tallest tree, pie for every state, Bonibook's classic design, Iceland Writer's Retreat, noodle museum, and more.

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